The first part of the 15^th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP15) will be held on October 11-15, 2021 in Kunming, Yunnan Province. Under the guidance of the Office of the Executive Committee for the Preparation of COP15, China Environment News solicited articles themed “Protecting the Beauty of Diversity and Building a Harmonious Homeland” from the whole society during June through August 2021 to display practice cases and stories of localities, organizations and individuals actively engaged in biodiversity conservation, thus further building a social consensus, promoting ideas of biodiversity conservation and contributing wisdom and strength to advancing biodiversity conservation and achieving sustainable development of harmony between man and nature. Recently, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) will forward some of the articles published in China Environment News on its new government media for readers’ reference.

 

Eastern black crested gibbons (Nomascus nasutus) have received the most of my time and emotional input in the 10+ years of conservation work. Especially from 2006 to 2012, I have traveled more than 20 times to the Bangliang forest area on the China-Vietnam border, with the sole purpose of protecting eastern black crested gibbons, one of the 25 most endangered primate species in the world.

 

 

Are eastern black crested gibbons extinct?

 

In 2002, the Fauna & Flora International (FFI) monitored eastern black crested gibbons, which were once thought extinct, in karst forests of Trùng Khánh, Tỉnh Cao Bằng in northern Vietnam.

 

Are there any in China? When I joined the FFI China project at the end of 2003, Dr. Bill Blesich, the then leader of the project, often said that there ought to be eastern black crested gibbons in the forests along the border between China’s Guangxi and Vietnam. Gibbons in Guangxi were last recorded in Longzhou County in the 1950s, as mentioned in the literature by China’s famous zoologist Tan Bangjie.

 

In 2005, we traveled to the historical gibbon distribution areas in Yunnan and Guangxi for a survey. Unfortunately, no valid information about gibbons was obtained. Later, the search for eastern black crested gibbons was put on hold due to engagement in the protection of other primate species.

 

 

In 2006, Dr. Bill Blesich surveyed an area where eastern black crested gibbons were distributed on the Vietnamese side and came back excitedly claiming that the gibbons were distributed in the forests along the China-Vietnam border. Moreover, the forests were excellent when seen from Vietnam, and it was necessary to organize a special survey and look deep into the forests. In this context, the FFI China project organized a field trip to the Bangliang forest area on April 23-28, 2006, hoping to find records of gibbon survival in China.

 

Conducting a field survey in karst forests was a first-time experience for all the team members who participated in the survey. Given harsh field conditions and local staff’s unfamiliarity with the landforms and topography of the forests, logistical preparations for the survey were not adequate.

 

In the survey, we entered the forests from two directions for three-day monitoring in the same area. It rained in the forests during the survey. On April 28, there was so much rain that our guide and local staff strongly urged us to pull out for safety reasons. A team member heard the suspected songs of gibbons on the first two days of the survey, but failed to record them due to long distance, which made us miss the opportunity to prove the presence of eastern black crested gibbons in China.

 

However, on May 4 that year, only six days after the end of the field survey, Zhou Fang from Guangxi University recorded the songs of eastern black crested gibbons during a bird survey in Bangliang, which is believed to be the first official record of the presence of eastern black crested gibbons in China since the 1950s. Then, a Kadoorie Conservation China (KCC) project captured the first video footage of eastern black crested gibbons in China during a field investigation into the species.

 

The odds of gibbons singing when it clears up after heavy rain are very high. If we could have stayed there for a few more days in spite of the rain, I would have had one more accomplishment that could be talked about for a lifetime.

 

 

50 years later, eastern black crested gibbons, which were thought extinct, have been rediscovered in China. Before 2007, however, we were not clear about the population size of this species globally.

The habitat of eastern black crested gibbons covered an area of less than 30 km2, and the monsoon rainforest surrounded by two rivers spanned both sides of the China-Vietnam border. Only by organizing a China-Vietnam joint synchronous field survey could we get a more accurate picture of their population size and specific distribution.

 

In September 2007, we organized the first China-Vietnam joint field survey. I was responsible for organizing the survey on the Chinese side.

 

The survey involved more than 20 participants, including four professional photographers recording the whole process, in addition to forestry staff, guides and survey experts. I was the only woman in the team. That survey made all of us good friends with permanent topics. Fan Pengfei, who had just graduated from Kunming Institute of Zoology with a PhD degree, was also among us.

 

The week-long field survey was quite strenuous. Apart from wet and sultry weather, and tortuous mountain roads, the most intractable logistical problem was to secure domestic water. As there were almost no surface water in karst forests, the water for the 20 plus team members had to be carried by villagers in containers during the survey. Except for cooking and drinking, we saved the water for other domestic uses as much as we could and used dew water collected by a plastic sheet to brush teeth and wash face.

 

During the field survey, we heard the songs of four groups of gibbons and directly observed three groups. Later, we compared and analyzed the survey data from both China and Vietnam and concluded that no group of gibbons had a home range entirely within China and the three groups we observed were all families moving across the border.

 

Although the news that gibbons have been rediscovered in Guangxi 50 years later is exciting, the population size of eastern black crested gibbons in this area is very small, and the area of the habitat suitable for their survival is limited (less than 4 km2). Therefore, the survey team recommended to the local government that urgent conservation measures be taken for gibbons in the Bangliang forest area to eliminate man-made interferences such as charcoaling and land clearing, with a view to ensuring the long-term survival of the gibbon population.

 

With the support from the Department of Forestry of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and the Government of Jinxi County, the regional Bangliang Gibbon Nature Reserve was set up in Guangxi in 2009 and was upgraded to a national one in 2013. The conservation work also paid off. As of 2018, the number of eastern black crested gibbons increased to 32, in five groups (including those moving across the border), according to a China-Vietnam joint survey. This is the result of the joint efforts of the government, researchers and conservation organizations, and also gives us hope and confidence in the conservation of critically endangered species.

 

 

From 2006 to early 2012, I paid more than 20 visits to Jinxi County for field investigation, research and monitoring, community survey, science popularization and China-Vietnam conservation exchanges, among others.

 

The conservation project offered stable financial support and coordination with the government to field research and monitoring; frontline scientific payoffs provided a solid scientific basis for conservation campaigns and China-Vietnam cross-border conservation cooperation; professional gibbon photos and videos made available evidences of scientific findings and the best propaganda materials for gibbon conservation and research. 

 

In the cooperation on the conservation, research and video shooting of eastern black crested gibbons, Fan Pengfei, Zhao Chao and I worked with tacit understanding. So far, Zhao Chao has gone deep into Bangliang three times and his photos of eastern black crested gibbons have been playing a part in the conservation and promotion of this species domestically and internationally. More than three years after I left the FFI China project, we three co-founded the Cloud Mountain Conservation (CMC), hoping to further contribute to the protection of gibbons in China and the ecosystems where they live in the model that “scientific research contributes to conservation while conservation needs drive scientific monitoring”.

 

Throughout the years of conservation work, whenever I am asked by the public “Is there any hope for gibbon conservation?”, or when I tell government officials about the necessity and urgency of gibbon conservation, I always use the story of the conservation of eastern black crested gibbons as an example. This is because it is a conservation project I have been personally involved in, and also a project where a species once thought extinct has been rediscovered and its population and habitat have gradually recovered.

 

The fruits of the conservation of eastern black crested gibbons, I think, can well illustrate the two elements of endangered species protection. First, adequate and detailed surveys and continuous scientific monitoring are the most important support for endangered species protection. Second, conservation is a systematic project that requires active communication and cooperation among all stakeholders as well as sustainable funding.

 

Today, the CMC is committed to protecting the critically endangered “Skywalker” gibbons (Hoolock tianxing), and hopes that everyone will join us in protecting gibbons and the habitat where they survive and thrive.

 

May thousands of mountains be evergreen and songs of gibbons be often heard!